Latest / 22 Panels - A Comic Book Podcast / With Great Power #312... 22 Panels with Mark Russell & Russ Braun

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With Great Power #312... 22 Panels with Mark Russell & Russ Braun · 22 Panels - A Comic Book Podcast

0:01
manru: Yeah, I'm extremely happy with how it all came together and turned out.
0:05
russellbraun: Yeah.
0:06
Tad Eggleston: See, I love it when we start nice, and in media res, that was Mark Russell Braun talking about being happy about seeing the proofs to this here book that they wrote called The Forgotten Divine, which is about to go up on Kickstarter.
0:21
Tad Eggleston: those few of you who listen to all 22 panels have already heard, Tom Pyre and Stuart Moore sing its praises. So, good evening, everybody. Welcome back to 22 panels. My guests tonight are,
0:36
Tad Eggleston: Returning for who knows how many times now, Mark Russell, and and for the first time, Russell Braun. And yeah, they are two different people. It's not Mark Russell Braun the way I initially introduced them, though I think that would be a cool way to put it across the top. Mark Russell Braun presents…
0:57
manru: Yeah, I mean, it would probably save a hoist some money, too.
1:00
Tad Eggleston: Yeah, yeah, I mean, little less printing, little less ink, yeah.
1:06
russellbraun: Okay.
1:07
Tad Eggleston: Mark, is this the first time you've worked with a Russell?
1:10
manru: Yeah, I think this is the first time I've ever encountered another Russell in the wild,
1:16
Tad Eggleston: Alright, alright.
1:18
russellbraun: Me too, yeah.
1:20
manru: Bye.
1:22
Tad Eggleston: So there we go. The, the book is the, the, Forgotten Divine. The Kickstarter will start up
1:31
Tad Eggleston: soon. This is where I'll remind everybody, as I did when I talked to Tom, and
1:37
Tad Eggleston: Stuart, that you go and you hit that button that says notify me, and the more people hit notify me, the quicker the, people decide, okay, it's time to roll!
1:47
manru: Yeah, you don't even have to actually get the comic, just click on the notify me, and then you at least get the updates.
1:53
Tad Eggleston: Right. Well, and I totally encourage you, once you've been notified, then click the, I want this, take my money button. Yeah.
2:03
manru: That's… that's pre… that's always my preference.
2:05
Tad Eggleston: Which, I mean, seriously…
2:11
Tad Eggleston: Okay, I have to announce this is good news,
2:15
Tad Eggleston: relating… er, reporting that Trump has announced a two-week ceasefire with Iran. No word on whether Iran has…
2:24
Tad Eggleston: Said anything about that, but it's still…
2:26
manru: Better than cutting down.
2:28
Tad Eggleston: Hellfire right now.
2:29
manru: I just want this TV show to end. I'm sick of all the… it's like reading a bad comic series that ends on a cliffhanger every issue.
2:37
manru: And then the next issue is just as idiotic as the last one, but then it ends on another cliffhanger.
2:44
Tad Eggleston: Right.
2:44
manru: Keep reading. It's like being trapped in a, like, something like that.
2:49
Tad Eggleston: It's like the horrible version of the Commandee Challenge, but the Commandee Challenge was awesome.
2:56
manru: Yeah.
2:57
manru: But, yeah, it just feels like,
3:01
manru: It's almost like he's an alien who feeds off of the anxiety of others, and…
3:09
manru: you know, it's like an anxiety vampire, and I'm just… I'm just over it. I wish it would… And…
3:14
Tad Eggleston: Well, you seem to have your next comic there, an anxiety vampire?
3:19
manru: The anxiety vampire.
3:22
Tad Eggleston: But, Ben.
3:24
manru: I wasn't happy unless everybody was, like, like, living and… constant terror.
3:31
Tad Eggleston: But back to push button, give money, which I think Kickstarter should rename the button that. It should say, it should just say Give Money button.
3:43
manru: No muss, no fuss. Clear. Exactly.
3:48
Tad Eggleston: as somebody, and again, I got the editorial pitch, but it's always fun to get the creative pitch. Pitch me.
4:01
manru: Grant and divide.
4:01
Tad Eggleston: Yes.
4:03
manru: Okay. Forgot to do.
4:04
Tad Eggleston: Vine.
4:06
manru: Well, it's about a cult, and if that's not enough, I mean, I'm fascinated by cults, so I mean, for me, that would be… that's when I would be hitting the give money button. But it's… it's about a cult that arises when this guy, this homeless vet who is suffering from PTSD, starts having visions of an alien world.
4:23
manru: And at first, he thinks it's a, it's a,
4:26
manru: a byproduct of his PTSD, but then other people start having the visions. And they're the same visions, and they realize that there's something else going on here, so they form a group together that ultimately becomes known as the Forgotten Divine.
4:38
manru: And for them, internally, it's like a support network. These are people that are trying to get to the bottom of a mystery that they're all experiencing, and that no one else can understand, because to everyone else outside, it looks like a cult. It looks like these people are crazy.
4:52
manru: And so it's about this reality, or this divergent reality, where to the people inside, this is real, and we are here to support each other, but to people outside, this is a dangerous cult that we don't understand, that is starting to, you know.
5:04
manru: come together and, like, take over a compound, and we don't know what to deal… what to do with this. So, it's kind of about how a cult looks, both from the outside, for people outside looking in, and from a cult from the inside out, what it means to the people who are in it. And I tried to, like, make it not, like.
5:22
manru: you know.
5:24
manru: A morality play, or, you know, an object lesson, but more, like, just about how people in getting what they need for their lives are trying to understand what's happening to them internally.
5:36
manru: Puts them at cross odds with other people who don't need that same thing.
5:42
Tad Eggleston: You have a special talent for taking things that, like, are easily turned into morality plays, and… and… not making them amoral, but making them funny and more of think pieces than…
5:59
Tad Eggleston: than strictly morality plays. Well, thank you.
6:03
manru: Yeah, it's more about the psychology of people, like, trying to get what they need from life and trying to figure out what's happening, you know, to the… to their own reality than it is, like, some sort of, like, just sort of blanket condemnation of cults or anything like that.
6:17
Tad Eggleston: Russ, just because I love Mark's work, one of my favorite questions to ask the artist that he works with when I'm lucky enough to talk to them is,
6:28
Tad Eggleston: Again, his… his stories are… are…
6:32
Tad Eggleston: I don't even know how to describe Mark Russell anymore. He does everything really, really well, but always makes you think, what's it like to get a Mark Russell script?
6:42
Tad Eggleston: when you got this pitch, what… I mean, did you go, okay, how much money, or did you go, oh my god, I must draw this?
6:49
russellbraun: Yeah, or a little of both. No, no, it was definitely, I must draw this.
6:57
russellbraun: I, honestly, I, I, I, I was at a point where I was looking for something
7:01
russellbraun: Really engaging, and I'd been getting a couple of scripts from different people, and different pitches from people that were just
7:09
russellbraun: It's like, doing this job is not easy. You have to dedicate yourself to it. And I'm real method about my comics. It's like, I have to be 100% in it, or I can't do it, and I can't, like…
7:20
Tad Eggleston: a method on a Mark Russell comic seems a little dangerous. Did you enjoy that?
7:25
russellbraun: I mean, I'm trying to change the speaker, so,
7:28
russellbraun: But no, it was just such a really well-put-together script, real great concept. It gave me a lot of room to have fun.
7:36
russellbraun: And, and yet.
7:38
russellbraun: everything was there. You know, I'm used to working with, a lot of really great writers, and
7:45
russellbraun: You know, I've worked with Garth Ennis for years, and the scripts that I get from him are always just perfect. I know exactly what he wants, and it's, like, my job to get inside the script and know that I'm delivering what is necessary.
7:57
russellbraun: And it was just as easy to do that, with the script, and, identify with it right away.
8:02
russellbraun: And… Had just a lot of fun.
8:09
Tad Eggleston: That's right.
8:10
Tad Eggleston: See, I always think of Derek Robinson on The Boys. When did you… reorient.
8:15
russellbraun: I…
8:15
Tad Eggleston: beginning?
8:17
russellbraun: I came on the boys about a third of the way through, edition 44, and pretty much just stayed, so…
8:25
Tad Eggleston: No, I knew you'd been there towards the end, but…
8:28
russellbraun: Yeah.
8:30
Tad Eggleston: I read The Boys when it was coming out, and I think I've done one reread.
8:35
Tad Eggleston: And I love the boys, but I also sometimes find the boys,
8:42
Tad Eggleston: Well, it's similar to some of Mark Russell's stuff, only, only, the laughs are more, more, like, laugh-out-loud…
8:52
Tad Eggleston: but then go, oh my god, why am I laughing at that? And the other stuff is more…
8:59
Tad Eggleston: oh my god, I don't want to think about this.
9:02
Tad Eggleston: This is what Garth Ennis does really well. What Mark Russell does really well is sucks you in and makes you want to think about it. And then you start laughing at it, and then you go, wait a minute, am I laughing at this?
9:16
Tad Eggleston: And then you go, no, okay, it's okay that I'm laughing at this, it's a… it's a… it's a… it's a… if you don't laugh, you'll scream type of laugh.
9:26
russellbraun: Well…
9:27
russellbraun: Yeah, the humor in Forgotten Divine is, is not as overt as a lot of Mark's stuff.
9:35
russellbraun: It's in there, and I agree. Oh, I'm certain of it.
9:38
Tad Eggleston: I mean, like,
9:42
Tad Eggleston: The first 7 pages, it reminds me a lot of traveling to Mars, which I think is Mark's masterpiece. So the fact that he's doing another story like that, where the humor is there, but it's also a, let's, like.
10:01
Tad Eggleston: really look at this, like, immediately excited me. So…
10:11
Tad Eggleston: just in the first few pages that I read,
10:15
Tad Eggleston: I, I, I was, I was immediately struck by…
10:23
Tad Eggleston: and this is another question I have for Russ, like, the mundanity?
10:31
Tad Eggleston: I don't know if that's actually a word, but, you know, I mean, we've got a broken-down strip mall, and a stripped-down office.
10:42
Tad Eggleston: Is where we… But they're beautifully rendered. You know, there's…
10:53
Tad Eggleston: Looking for the right word.
10:57
manru: One of the things… Oh, it, it, right, I'll just butt in, but one of the things I really wanted from this, and which I thought Russ would be great at, and I was right about that, was,
11:09
manru: Combining what you say, the mundanity, the, just sort of the dingy, everydayness of life with the fantastic, surreal nature of these visions.
11:20
manru: And I think it's really the contrast of those that kind of, like, show you why these people choose the forgotten… Oh, absolutely.
11:27
Tad Eggleston: Yeah, yeah.
11:28
manru: Like, this magical kingdom that's within the mansion of their own mind, that they… it's impossible for them to explain to anyone else.
11:35
Tad Eggleston: Is…
11:36
russellbraun: There had to be,
11:38
russellbraun: a real dichotomy. You had to make sure that the real-life stuff was believable and gritty, and then when you saw some of the fantastic stuff.
11:46
russellbraun: That it felt like there was a real suspension of disbelief, and you could actually get into it, that way.
11:52
russellbraun: So, and then you're kind of part of the character, too. You're in there with the main character, trying to decide, what is this stuff? What is this vision? Is it, is it in my head? Is it reality? Is it… is it on its way here? Is it just being made up? So…
12:08
russellbraun: Yeah, well, I appreciate that, because that's, like, again, part of getting into the story was knowing when to pull back. There's a lot of stuff
12:16
russellbraun: That you want to make super exciting on every page, but…
12:20
russellbraun: If you do that, then you lose the impact of the page turn when now the aliens show up. It's like…
12:26
Tad Eggleston: Right.
12:27
russellbraun: You know, let me make.
12:28
Tad Eggleston: Listen.
12:28
russellbraun: It's as boring as possible, but make sure that we know what's going on.
12:33
Tad Eggleston: As I listened to you talk, and as I was looking at the pages again, you know, the…
12:40
Tad Eggleston: the artist I want to compare you to in terms of the background stuff is, I think, David Lapham is the artist that I think of in terms of being able to take just that
12:52
Tad Eggleston: very mundane… Scene…
12:56
Tad Eggleston: and breathe a life into it. So, you were talking about being very method. How do you…
13:05
Tad Eggleston: Like, like, how, how, how, I mean, is…
13:08
Tad Eggleston: Because, I mean, just having talked to artists, you know, I know that, like…
13:17
Tad Eggleston: the more fun the page, the more fun they have doing it, though sometimes they also, like, hate it for how much work it is. But… but…
13:27
Tad Eggleston: like, the boring pages, like, sometimes they have to find a way to, like, how do I make this interesting to me? It's where you find tons of gags and stuff, and…
13:37
Tad Eggleston: And, like, that's one of the things that actually caught my attention. There's not any clear, oh, let's cheat and have fun with this sticker here, or this…
13:50
Tad Eggleston: thing there, it… In fact, like, we have empty picture frames, and I think they're supposed to be empty.
13:58
russellbraun: Yeah, there'll be picture frames out with stuff in them later on, but but yeah, it was like, let's keep this office as absolutely mundane as possible. This, we won't give away too much story in this, but he's at a psychiatrist's office. We've seen that in the first two pages he released.
14:17
russellbraun: And.
14:17
Tad Eggleston: Though, as somebody who loves my psychiatrist and, you know, that sort of thing, I'm gonna say we're gonna use the term psychiatrist loosely for this guy.
14:27
russellbraun: Sure.
14:32
manru: Yeah, I think he would be legally required to tell… to correct you, that he's not a licensed psychiatrist, but that he…
14:39
manru: like, a professional…
14:40
Tad Eggleston: Plays one in a comic book.
14:42
manru: He has been hired by the VA to function as a therapist.
14:46
russellbraun: Right, right.
14:48
russellbraun: So yeah, he… although… is he prescribing drugs, though? Because Rodney is on drugs.
14:52
manru: Yeah, but no, that's a good point.
14:57
manru: Someone's prescribing those drugs.
14:59
russellbraun: Yeah. So, yeah, being method, I'm on all those drugs too now, so I, no, I'm just kidding.
15:05
manru: That's the sort of, that's the sort of dedication I demand.
15:11
russellbraun: No, as far as, like, the method stuff goes, it's more about the acting. Like, it's trying to be, like… I try to make sure the acting is authentic, and that the, the characters are not just… well, also not just different…
15:22
russellbraun: versions of me, you know, I try to make sure I can get into, like.
15:25
Tad Eggleston: Wait a minute! You're… you're… you're not Sean Phillips?
15:29
Tad Eggleston: And I love Sean Phillips, I say that lovingly. I only say that because Jacob said it when he was on. When I was… when I was… when I was… when I was… when I was giving Jacob praise, he's like, well, I can draw people that aren't versions of myself.
15:44
russellbraun: Oh, well.
15:47
Tad Eggleston: Nope.
15:47
russellbraun: Almost everyone in the world.
15:48
Tad Eggleston: Sean, Sean, please, I said that lovingly. You're allowed to come on 22 panels still.
15:57
russellbraun: But no, as far as, like, the emotions of it, you know, it's not just, you know, just trying to make sure I'm getting the idea across before we even have the dialogue in there, you know?
16:08
Tad Eggleston: Well, and, like, you… I mean, I'm flipping… you kill it. I mean, I think…
16:14
Tad Eggleston: I think one of the reasons I went straight to the backgrounds was… was…
16:19
Tad Eggleston: A, just, like, it was striking how… how good they were in their simplicity, but… but B, because…
16:28
Tad Eggleston: You kill it with the acting.
16:31
Tad Eggleston: That's an easy thing to get to.
16:33
Tad Eggleston: I mean, I love the slouch.
16:36
Tad Eggleston: I love the… the weight.
16:39
Tad Eggleston: Okay, I'm gonna give away part of… part of… part of page 1. One of them is eating a corndog, and I've never actually found eating a corndog done so interestingly and to… to great effect.
16:54
Tad Eggleston: Well, not…
16:54
russellbraun: The corn dogs are important.
16:56
manru: but the corndogs seem to work their way into, like, a lot of my stories. I think maybe just because it's a great…
17:03
manru: Sort of frivolous thing to have a character doing that's easy to draw.
17:09
russellbraun: Okay.
17:10
Tad Eggleston: Mark is not the artist. Is it easy to draw, Russ?
17:14
russellbraun: Yeah.
17:14
Tad Eggleston: Okay.
17:16
russellbraun: Although, I'm not sure I got the stick portion exactly right.
17:21
russellbraun: But, yeah, because I… it's funny, since I dropped that, I've had a corn dog, and I realized
17:26
russellbraun: I may have put too much stick on that corn dog, so… but things you have to realize.
17:31
manru: It's a regional, it's a regional variation.
17:33
Tad Eggleston: Yeah, they're different brands.
17:35
manru: I live in Portland, and the corndog is actually a Portland creation. It was originated here.
17:41
Tad Eggleston: Okay.
17:41
manru: A certain amount of… there's a certain amount.
17:42
Tad Eggleston: Them that we should blame.
17:44
manru: That goes into the corn dog.
17:48
russellbraun: But, but yeah, no, I have him, kind of eating it pretty quickly, and at one point, there's just… there's a little butt end of the corn dog left, and, like, probably too much stick sticking up through it, like, he'd choke himself when he was trying to eat that, but…
18:02
manru: That guy that would barrel through a corndog, I think, though. Yeah.
18:06
russellbraun: Yeah, two bikes was probably all Doc needed for that, so…
18:10
russellbraun: And Doc is one of my favorite characters in the book, too. I just… I just love Doc, so…
18:16
Tad Eggleston: No, he, he, he, he definitely…
18:21
Tad Eggleston: I mean, you, you, you, I mean, to make me… attached to…
18:29
Tad Eggleston: And he does say, even… I mean, after the malpractice suit, so, like, he's honest about not being a good…
18:37
manru: Yeah, he's kind of, you know, a, you know, I think even by his standards, he would call himself a loser, but at the same time, he is, you know, sort of…
18:48
manru: He's a loser. I think you would much rather want to be around than most people who would consider themselves winners, because he's honest, self-effacing, and he genuinely does sort of care about other people.
19:01
russellbraun: Yeah, I agree.
19:03
Tad Eggleston: Yeah.
19:05
Tad Eggleston: But… but, like, yeah, no, I'm sorry, I'm… I… sometimes it's bad when I… when I start looking at the art while we're talking, because I'll, like, fall into…
19:17
russellbraun: But it's tough for… there's so much… I don't want to give away too much, too. No, no.
19:20
Tad Eggleston: And we don't want to give away too much.
19:23
manru: Oh, my God.
19:23
russellbraun: put a light on so I can see, so you guys can see me.
19:28
Tad Eggleston: I thought this whole thing was for effect.
19:31
Tad Eggleston: Kidding, though.
19:34
russellbraun: Oh, editor.
19:36
russellbraun: What?
19:38
russellbraun: terrible.
19:38
russellbraun: camera.
19:39
Tad Eggleston: what?
19:41
Tad Eggleston: what was the most… I mean, we'll go to early stuff, and then we'll try to come up with questions away from the book. What was the most fun,
19:51
Tad Eggleston: I mean, without giving anything away, what… the two-fold question that I like to ask, you know, Russ, what's…
20:01
Tad Eggleston: Again, try not to give away, like.
20:06
Tad Eggleston: anything significant, but there's almost always, like, a scene or whatnot that an artist will get that just goes, oh, I love this, let's go.
20:17
Tad Eggleston: And then let's turn it around afterwards to Mark, what did you get back and go, oh my god, that is so much better than I wrote it.
20:28
russellbraun: Well, I think, for me, it would have to be, some of the alien stuff. I like the way we work back and forth on it. You know, Mark gave me a pretty specific idea of what he wanted, and gave me room to kind of grow with it.
20:43
russellbraun: And then,
20:46
russellbraun: just giving sketches back and forth. It wasn't even a particular scene, it was just kind of what we landed on
20:51
russellbraun: The main alien look, and
20:55
russellbraun: Yeah, and that's not giving anything away, so… Yep.
20:59
russellbraun: So that's the best way to answer it. It's definitely, you know, as much as I love the acting and the character stuff, it's having that
21:08
russellbraun: kind of exceptional stuff to get to, that was the fun for me. So, a big fun.
21:14
russellbraun: Clark?
21:16
manru: Yeah, I think for me, I mean, there's a few of those moments where I thought, wow, this is, like, really something I can't wait for people to see. And I don't… but it's hard to talk about them without giving stuff away, because one of those things is the very last page of the story.
21:30
manru: Which, for me, is, like, one of the best pages I've ever seen associated with my work, but I obviously can't talk about that without giving it away.
21:38
Tad Eggleston: What!
21:40
manru: There's also just this, you know, much more,
21:44
manru: It's, it's a, it's a much less…
21:46
manru: plot-heavy, or much less of a, like a splash page reveal-type moment, but I just loved it, and it was like, when they have their first convention at a hotel, they have their… it was like a, like a Best Western, or something like that.
22:00
manru: And they're always having a blast, you know, jumping in the pool and hanging out at the bar, and I just thought, this is, like, probably the high point in any sort of cult. You know, you get, like, the best Western, and you're talking about your beliefs, and I remember seeing a documentary about Heaven's Gate
22:18
manru: and the cult that believed in the UFO that was coming, which is sort of partially, you know, inspired the Forgotten Divine. But, I remember watching the documentary, and they had a similar
22:33
manru: sort of experience, where they rented out, like, a, like a hotel on, like, the Oregon coast.
22:39
manru: And, you know, as a hotel, it's probably used to, you know, hosting, like, their… like, coin collectors or stamp collectors in their convention center. But they hosted this cult.
22:48
manru: And it just seemed like, like, they just loved being there. Like, they felt like this is the moment in which we've achieved, you know, mainstream success. And they had people who had nothing to do with the cult that were coming to the convention just to see what it was about.
23:02
manru: And it struck me as, like, yeah, that was probably their high point, because they were interacting with people outside the cult, and everyone seemed to be having a good time, and, you know, people were going to the buffet and the swimming pool, and it all seemed downhill from there.
23:16
russellbraun: And it's probably, yeah, in our story, too, it is kind of the high point for…
23:21
manru: Yes, if the credits had rolled there, you would think, this is a happy story.
23:27
Tad Eggleston: Wait a minute! A Mark Russell story that doesn't have a happy ending?
23:31
Tad Eggleston: I'm proud.
23:33
manru: can I join a cult?
23:40
Tad Eggleston: Talk to me about the working process with each other, since it sounds like you were able to work really collaboratively.
23:49
manru: Well, one of the advantages of doing, you know, this through a Kickstarter, through, you know, not trying to hit a deadline and be part of a series, is that we had a long time to sort of work together. So, you know, no one was too sweated on deadlines or, you know, gotta get this done. So it was much more leisurely. And, you know, Russ would send me pages.
24:08
manru: And I would sort of, like, talk about them, or I would,
24:12
manru: say, you know, I think these… the tonality of this scene needs to go a little more this way.
24:19
manru: And then he had no problem going back and changing things, or just, like, going forward, changing them. So I think that the sort of leisurely pace at which we made this… this comic allowed us both to feel like we could actually step… step back from our own work, look at it a little critically, and, you know, and change things.
24:40
russellbraun: Yeah.
24:41
russellbraun: No, no, I had, like, I wouldn't say an initial false start, but it was, like, it was hard for me to get
24:47
russellbraun: rolling with it, and I had a lot of stuff going on, and again, because there were no deadlines.
24:51
russellbraun: artists without a deadline, it's a tough thing. Like, oh, well, I'll take my time to get it just the way I want it, and make it perfect, and then you put more pressure on yourself, so… But again, when we did communicate back and forth, it was really easy, and I do pretty…
25:08
russellbraun: pretty tight roughs, like, that's… my breakdowns are kind of my pencils, in a way, and then I just go to a finish page after that, so…
25:15
russellbraun: when I could send breakdowns to Mark, and he could see… it's not just like a stick figure, it's like he can see what the acting's gonna be, what the scene is gonna look like, where the establishing shots are. And so, when he could give me a comment on that, I could make a slight tweak or a big tweak, and go right to the finish from there, so…
25:33
russellbraun: That was a pleasure to do, you know?
25:39
Tad Eggleston: How long have you been working on it?
25:43
russellbraun: I think… year and a half?
25:46
manru: Yeah, I finished the script for this about 2 years ago, so that sounds about right.
25:51
Tad Eggleston: That's…
25:52
russellbraun: So, yeah, bits and starts, and then finally, kind of like I said, when… when he got into it and the ball started rolling, it was just like, here we go, here we go, and you got the momentum, and then, I got really into it and wrapped it up. So,
26:07
russellbraun: Yeah, yeah, so it was just…
26:09
russellbraun: It was a really interesting evolution, and it kind of mirrors the story. It kind of mirrors the book, because you go from
26:19
russellbraun: In 64 pages, you get the full evolution of a character from having a dream to having a cult, and…
26:27
russellbraun: And beyond. So, that's kind of the way it was built, too, so…
26:32
russellbraun: One little bit of itself.
26:34
Tad Eggleston: That's tight, 64 pages?
26:38
manru: It's a weird size for a story, but…
26:41
Tad Eggleston: I mean… That actually, like… Makes me more excited?
26:47
manru: Yeah, because…
26:48
Tad Eggleston: Cause… Because, like you said, it's a weird… weird size for a story, so, like…
26:56
Tad Eggleston: I can't imagine you'd choose 64 unless it was like, no, this is the right length.
27:02
manru: Well, this is, like, one of the benefits of doing it this way was that, you know, it's like we had the rare luxury in the comics world of deciding the length based upon the story, not the other way around. Right. It's like we just figured out how long… how long the story needed to be, and then that became the pages.
27:22
manru: Which is almost unheard of in comics, but I think it really shows, because it's not…
27:28
Tad Eggleston: It's happening a little bit more in, like, the publishing world side of graphic novels.
27:36
manru: Yeah.
27:36
Tad Eggleston: Because they don't know what they're doing?
27:38
Tad Eggleston: Yeah, and I…
27:39
manru: You know, I've done a few of these stories with, with Ahoy now that are weird lengths, like 48 pages, or…
27:47
Tad Eggleston: Right.
27:48
manru: And the benefit is that, you know, you get exactly as much story as you need. You don't, you.
27:55
Tad Eggleston: Right.
27:56
manru: well, this went on for a few pages too long, or, oh, you know, they obviously cut out, like, a back plot here, or they cut this short. It's exactly as long as it needs to be, which is great. And also, you know, it allows… it's not, like.
28:11
manru: Completely wasted, because you write enough of these things, you can put them together in an omnibus.
28:18
Tad Eggleston: Absolutely. But, but I also, like, I, I have never… They've never understood.
28:26
Tad Eggleston: the… the…
28:27
Tad Eggleston: the… let's not make comics the size that they should be. I mean, I kind of get the, oh, you have to work in fours because of the way paper works, and it's like, yes, but you…
28:41
manru: You know that you.
28:42
Tad Eggleston: And put things other than…
28:44
Tad Eggleston: comic pages on a page, right? Books have empty pages all the time, because books also have to work in fours, but nobody ever told Terry Pratchett, I'm sorry, you have a 217-page book, we need 3 more pages, or you need to.
29:02
manru: Imagine you were making a movie, and somebody said, this needs to be exactly 1 hour and 37 minutes long, not 1 minute more, not 1 minute less. Imagine how it would kind of warp the storytelling of the movie.
29:13
Tad Eggleston: Yeah.
29:13
manru: As opposed to just, like, well, these are the scenes that have to be there, and we cut out the ones that didn't. And that's kind of the way I now prefer to make comics whenever I can.
29:25
manru: And, and I think it's a better experience for the reader. And, you know, I understand why you would want to do 20-page, 22-page increments if you're doing an ongoing, if you're doing.
29:36
Tad Eggleston: Yeah.
29:37
manru: They go on forever, so we'll cut it in these little bite-sized portions that'll cost the same every month. But if you're not doing that, then why not write, you know, a comic that's got a freaky, you know, length?
29:50
Tad Eggleston: Well, and as you and I have talked about before, like.
29:54
Tad Eggleston: I still think the future of comics is not single issues. You know, I keep sharing with people your comic store idea of overbuy issue one and only subscribe… only subscriptions for any other issues.
30:10
manru: Yeah, and I think that…
30:13
manru: A big problem in the comics industry is, like, all the waste that goes into printing issues and putting them on shelves that no one will ever buy.
30:21
manru: And so, it's like, all these Issue 3s, Issue 4s get pulped and remaindered, because the… everybody who loved Issue 1 is now waiting for the trade, and everybody who hated Issue 1 is no longer, you know, buying your title. So…
30:36
manru: I guess my plan is to sell the whole thing to people before they realize they hate it.
30:45
russellbraun: Well, and this one is, I mean, they're going, prestige with us, too. It's a hardcover, one-shot graphic novel. So, and, you know, we gotta give a lot of credit to Ahoy, too. They're just the greatest company to work for.
30:57
Tad Eggleston: Oh, they're, they're fantastic.
30:59
manru: They are, you know, one of the few companies that is, like, honestly asking themselves.
31:05
manru: how, you know, not like, how can we make this cheaper, but how can we make this better? I remember…
31:11
manru: when I was doing Second Coming with them for the first, you know, the first volume, realizing that this was very different than the comic experience. Not to… not to throw anyone else under the bus, but it was a very different experience, because, you know, their first thought was, well, you know, do you need any extra pages?
31:29
manru: Or, you know, what if we brought in a different artist so that you could have one artist, you know, Richard Pace, do the scenes.
31:37
manru: That are… that are set.
31:39
manru: On heaven, or in the ancient past, and then you can have someone else do the scenes that are in the present, and it will give your comic a very different look.
31:46
manru: You know, we'll tell people.
31:48
manru: like, visually, you know, where this part of the story is taking place, which was just incredibly important, because it's a story that jumps around a lot between time periods. And, you know, it would be hard to convince any other publisher to do that, but to them.
32:02
Tad Eggleston: Well, I don't know, DC?
32:03
manru: Look at that.
32:04
Tad Eggleston: for Tom King on Strange… Strange Adventures right after you'd done it with…
32:11
Tad Eggleston: I mean, so you paved the way, Mark.
32:13
manru: Oh, that's what…
32:14
russellbraun: Okay.
32:15
manru: I like… I prefer to think that way, but I doubt that's the case.
32:17
Tad Eggleston: No, you paved the way. They saw it work on the book that they let go, and they're like.
32:24
manru: The DC was not thinking too much about Second Coming after that point. I think that they were glad to see it go.
32:35
Tad Eggleston: I mean…
32:40
manru: I mean, I will say, to this day, like,
32:47
manru: to me, the surprise with DC was not that they asked me to take Second Coming to somewhere else. The surprise was that they approved it in the first place.
32:55
manru: Because it seemed like a real edgy, kind of daring concept to be, you know, at DC. But yeah, any big, big two or superhero publisher, this thing is only tangentially connected to superheroes. It's more about…
33:09
manru: you know, religion and faith, and it's like… so I have to give them a lot of credit for ever greenlighting Second Coming in the first place.
33:16
Tad Eggleston: I mean, when it, when it came up with, with,
33:21
Tad Eggleston: Tom and Stuart. What I said is my unofficial theory that I didn't expect them to be able to confirm or deny, was that DC had approved it as a favor to the guy that brought them the Flintstones, because that would get him the publicity when they let it go somewhere else, and… and they… they…
33:44
Tad Eggleston: didn't…
33:46
Tad Eggleston: didn't specifically say yes or no on that, but they did say that DC was… was… was much more…
33:54
Tad Eggleston: What's the word I'm looking for?
33:57
Tad Eggleston: Easy to work with in terms of getting the rights transferred than you would.
34:02
manru: Yeah, no, I will fairly…
34:03
Tad Eggleston: respect.
34:04
manru: Because, you know, there was new owner… or not new owners, there was new ownership, but more importantly, new ownership, there was a new president at DC, and it was right around the time that the,
34:14
manru: the Batwing thing happened, where, you know, they accidentally showed Batman's dick in, like…
34:20
manru: And that, like, was a Stage 4 fire. That was a four-alarm fire at DC. Like, people were getting fired, people were, you know, in deep trouble because of that, and so nobody wanted to be the next Batwing.
34:35
manru: And I think…
34:37
Tad Eggleston: like, I'm shocked that people got fired, because
34:40
Tad Eggleston: I still don't think that that was an accident.
34:43
manru: Oh, no, I mean…
34:45
manru: The accident was that probably they shaded it too late, or they didn't darken it enough.
34:52
Tad Eggleston: No, I mean, they completely sold out a massive print run.
34:58
Tad Eggleston: Got huge amounts of free publicity, and it was already enough in the dark that managing to shade it for the digital version was not difficult.
35:08
manru: I think it was… what it was, was a fault line, where the old DC, the DC I sort of came up in, you know, where I was doing the Hanna-Barbera stuff.
35:16
manru: was very laissez-faire. It was very much into pushing the boundaries and doing, kind of, stories like that.
35:22
manru: And then at some point, the leadership changed, I think when Pam became president over there, and it became much more conservative, became much more about, like, selling pajamas and, you know, about the toys and games and stuff.
35:38
Tad Eggleston: that Batwang would sell lots of pajamas.
35:40
manru: You need one for you?
35:41
Tad Eggleston: your comic book.
35:42
manru: You could have, like, a twister, you know, a twister edition. But I think that was the moment people realized this is not… we're not playing this by the same rules anymore, and so it created this…
35:56
manru: atmosphere where nobody wanted to get called to the principal's office, like the people who did the Naked Batman comic did.
36:03
Tad Eggleston: I… I do…
36:04
manru: That would have been the thing that would have gotten them called to the principal's office, or at least Second Coming would.
36:09
Tad Eggleston: Right, right. I do have a question for both of you regarding the Batwing.
36:13
Tad Eggleston: Somehow.
36:16
manru: I'm a Batwang expert, so you're…
36:18
Tad Eggleston: There we go. Somehow… I don't think there's any book that I've seen more graded copies of.
36:26
Tad Eggleston: than… than Batman Damned No. 1.
36:30
Tad Eggleston: But the entire reason… that it's of any value is because of the Batwang.
36:39
Tad Eggleston: And when you grade it.
36:41
Tad Eggleston: you encase it in plastic and can no longer see the Batwang. So why on earth is it actually more valuable as a graded addition?
36:55
manru: That's the totem economy, right? It's like, you know, on their island, there are families that own these enormous monoliths of rock, but they're on the bottom of the sea. It's like they fell out of a canoe or whatever, but you still own that. It's almost like the ancient version of NFT.
37:14
manru: It's like, nobody can access that rock, nobody can even prove it exists, but we know through tradition that you had this enormous monolith of stone, which we all value, and it fell out of your canoe and sank to the bottom of the sea, so you could sell that to somebody else, or use it as a unit of currency, even though nobody could ever touch this giant stone monolith, because it has… still has the,
37:34
manru: The mental and emotional currency, of the respect of the people who are Transacting with you.
37:41
russellbraun: The non-fungible totem.
37:44
manru: That's perfect. Russ?
37:47
manru: Take a breath.
37:48
Tad Eggleston: I mean, I, I have always had… Difficulty, like, truly understanding the… the…
37:58
Tad Eggleston: speculative, collectible side of comics to begin with, but, like, there is nothing that I understand less than a graded copy of Batman Damned No. 1. It just doesn't make sense to me.
38:12
manru: From a collector's market, you know, it makes sense. From a reader's market, it just seems wacky.
38:18
Tad Eggleston: Well, none of them make sense from a reader's market.
38:22
russellbraun: Then it never makes sense to me, because I'm just a reader, you know?
38:25
Tad Eggleston: Yeah, exactly. None of them make sense from a reader's market, you know.
38:30
russellbraun: I have comics that would be worth thousands, that have been read so many times, and they're so dog-eared, I couldn't sell it to the most, you know, rabid fan, but but that's because… I mean, you'd be surprised.
38:43
Tad Eggleston: Christ.
38:44
russellbraun: well.
38:45
manru: That's the only reason why these, you know, early edition action comics and whatnot are collectible, because everyone who read them loved them. They actually wanted to… they would read them again, they would put them under their pillow, they would, you know, trade them with friends, and so they got…
39:00
Tad Eggleston: Carry them in their back pocket.
39:02
manru: Yeah, so they weren't collectible anymore because they were too worn out. And, you know, the few that weren't just sort of loved to death are kind of what created the scarcity that makes them so valuable.
39:14
Tad Eggleston: I mean, there were, I think…
39:17
Tad Eggleston: close to 3 million copies of Action Comics No. 1 printed. You know, it was not…
39:25
Tad Eggleston: A low-print run comic.
39:27
manru: Right, it wasn't rarity. It wasn't like, you know, like the, the…
39:33
manru: Warren Harding wearing a, wearing a birthday hat, like, rare sort of thing, you know? It was, like, it was a very common thing, but the number that actually survived in pristine shape is extremely rare, because people enjoyed them, because they were sold for.
39:49
Tad Eggleston: And, and, and pristine is a relative term.
39:54
manru: Yeah.
39:55
Tad Eggleston: I mean…
39:55
russellbraun: Actually, the…
39:57
russellbraun: Sorry, no one ever really thought that this stuff was going to be collectible. It was… it was entertaining.
40:01
Tad Eggleston: No, not, not, not until, not until, like, the… I mean, baseball cards and comics, in some ways, were ruined.
40:10
Tad Eggleston: On one level, in the 90s, with the first massive speculator boom.
40:16
Tad Eggleston: Where it's like, oh, we must buy 3 copies of this, and keep 2 of them in hermetically sealed packages.
40:24
manru: By the time you realize something's collectible, it's no longer collectible. Yeah. Because all the other people you would be selling this to are doing the same thing. They're also hoarding.
40:32
Tad Eggleston: Exactly. No, the two examples I always use are the death of Superman and Ken Griffey Jr.'s rookie card.
40:42
Tad Eggleston: The Death of Superman, 3 weeks after it came out, if it was sealed in the plastic bag, was going for, like, $500. That same sealed plastic bag, Death of Superman now, you know what the average going price is?
40:57
russellbraun: 2 bucks?
40:58
Tad Eggleston: 10 bucks.
40:59
russellbraun: Good luck to you.
40:59
Tad Eggleston: If it's sealed in the bag, it's like 10 bucks.
41:04
Tad Eggleston: I think it's got a $4 cover price. It was an expensive comic for when it came out.
41:11
russellbraun: Well, the fluctuations in the market, too. It's like, you know, you do start thinking every once in a while, it's like, I've been doing… I've been doing comics for a long time, I've been collecting them for a long time, maybe I should sell some of this stuff, and then…
41:21
Tad Eggleston: Right.
41:22
russellbraun: This one was worth $700. It's like, now it's worth 30. Right.
41:26
Tad Eggleston: But, but then the, the, the, the Ken Griffey Jun… Junior rookie card, the 89 upper deck, like.
41:34
Tad Eggleston: In 1990, it was, like, a $500 card.
41:39
Tad Eggleston: when he went into the Hall of Fame, it was like a $40 card.
41:43
russellbraun: Really?
41:44
manru: Well, they… well, that was, like, greater.
41:45
Tad Eggleston: Everybody and their uncle has 10 of them.
41:48
manru: Yeah, well, in all the other, I mean, Upper Deck printed, like, they're, like, multiple… they sort of realized that they could make money by, ruining the very thing that made it valuable, which was its scarcity.
42:00
Tad Eggleston: Just printing. Right.
42:01
manru: Printing more and more of them.
42:03
Tad Eggleston: Well, and printing higher quality.
42:06
Tad Eggleston: So it was easier to keep it in good condition.
42:09
manru: Yeah.
42:09
Tad Eggleston: Like, it's not… it's not… it's not cardboard… I mean, it's cardboard, but it's not like… it's not like shoebox cardboard anymore. It's like this high-quality, glossy, you know…
42:19
manru: Yeah, the most valuable baseball card is the, like a Honus Wagner, because originally they would put them in cigarette packs, and he did not approve of smoking, so he made them stop printing the Honus Wagner, and it's the most valuable.
42:33
Tad Eggleston: That's the…
42:34
manru: Because…
42:34
Tad Eggleston: That's the legend, that there's a lot of evidence that says they didn't pay him enough.
42:41
manru: But for one reason or the other, the repo.
42:44
Tad Eggleston: Pulled his card.
42:45
manru: The reason why it's valuable is because there's, like, this artificial scarcity, not.
42:49
Tad Eggleston: Right.
42:50
manru: Not because, you know, he was.
42:51
Tad Eggleston: And it's ancient.
42:52
manru: Excellent. Yeah.
42:54
Tad Eggleston: You know, there are even less of those known to be in existence than Action Comics.
42:59
Tad Eggleston: number one. I think Action Comics, number one, there's, like, 14 copies known to be in existence, whereas The Honus Wagner, I think.
43:08
Tad Eggleston: I think it went back down to 7, because there was a big thing with the Honus Wagner. Somebody took their Honus Wagner car.
43:13
manru: holiday.
43:14
Tad Eggleston: Lasered off the edges.
43:16
manru: Right, they get more proof.
43:18
Tad Eggleston: A fraction of an inch to make it look…
43:21
Tad Eggleston: And suddenly, there was found in an attic
43:25
Tad Eggleston: the… the most pristine Honus Wagner card ever, until it came out, that it was just one of the old ones, and had been…
43:35
manru: Right.
43:35
Tad Eggleston: This is how crazy they get. It's like, hey, let's take my million dollar artifact and use a laser cutter to make it look neater.
43:46
manru: But it's a good example of, you know, I think the collector's market is really more… it's kind of, like, inherently a scam. It feels like it's always kind of like a bubble and waiting. Whereas the reader's market, you know, the worst thing that happens is, like, you just…
44:03
manru: you just stop loving this thing that you had, you know? It's like the stakes are so much lower, and yet what you get from value-wise is so much higher. It seems like a foolish to play any other game, but to just buy something because you love it.
44:21
Tad Eggleston: This actually takes me to… Mark's gotten to answer this question before, so we're gonna… we're gonna go to Russell.
44:27
Tad Eggleston: for this, give me, give me your comics biography. And when I say that, I don't mean your bibliography. Anybody can look up the stuff that you've done.
44:35
Tad Eggleston: Talk to me about, like, the first comic you remember buying, the comics you loved growing up, the comics that made you go, hey, I want to do this. Talk to me about the formative comics in your life.
44:48
russellbraun: Sure. Well, I was a kid growing up in Queens in the late 60s, early 70s, so…
44:55
russellbraun: For me, it was cartoons on TV first. It was, the Spider-Man cartoon, the Ralph Bakshi 66 cartoon, 67 cartoon.
45:05
russellbraun: And, I'd come home from school.
45:08
russellbraun: Kindergarten and stuff, and watch this in the afternoon.
45:12
russellbraun: And then, my dad showed me, that this is, I mean, really early on, that you don't have to just wait for 2 o'clock in the afternoon, you can get Spider-Man anytime you want in these comic books. So, down to the drugstore, spin through the rack and get the comic books. My first comic, though, was…
45:31
russellbraun: an Iron Man comic that I got,
45:35
russellbraun: The day I went to get my allergy tests done, and this is back in time when they would do little tiny needles for each one, so I had 50 needles in each arm.
45:46
Tad Eggleston: only got one comic for that day, you should have gotten multiple comics.
45:50
russellbraun: Well, one topic and an ice cream soda at the…
45:52
Tad Eggleston: Oh, okay, that's fair.
45:55
russellbraun: I know, now I sound like…
45:56
Tad Eggleston: 50 needles, that's… that's intense.
45:59
russellbraun: And I was wearing a boater, and I, you know, it sounded like this, like, in the 20s or something like that, but it was an Iron Man comic where he fights, the Blizzard, so I think it was the first appearance of the Blizzard. It was a great cover, and and right after that, so I picked up
46:15
russellbraun: Spider-Man was my guy, that was my gateway drug, but the Iron Man comics are the ones I remembered right away,
46:21
russellbraun: The next one was, like, fighting… Happy Hogan turned into the Freak, or something like that, or… and,
46:28
russellbraun: So… and Ironman ended up with, roller skates at the bottom of his… his boots, because he was out of power, and he just ended up skating away. It was really odd, so… but, but yeah, that was my start, was, animation.
46:42
russellbraun: of Spider-Man into comics of Spider-Man, and all that great 70s stuff, the Ross Andrew,
46:49
russellbraun: Green Goblin stuff, and so yeah, that's what… that's what started me up, and I literally said, from that point on.
46:57
russellbraun: This is what I want to do for a living.
47:01
russellbraun: during off times when I wasn't going to be a baseball player, and a scientist who wrote my own and drew my own science books, but I was going to do comic books. So, that was the plan.
47:13
Tad Eggleston: Okay, as, as Mark can, can,
47:17
Tad Eggleston: attest were definitely the, the, the baseball pod… er, the comics podcast most into baseball. So, so what team did you want to play for when you, when you were wanting to be a baseball player?
47:30
russellbraun: Growing up in Queens, New York, obviously, it was the Yankees. It was the Yankees. I liked the Mets, too, but it was the Yankees, and I… honestly, I was never a, when I liked… when I was growing up, the Yankees were a pretty crappy team, so, they're still my…
47:44
Tad Eggleston: If you were in that one… one era, I was… I was just talking to… to…
47:52
Tad Eggleston: Somebody that, that, that was telling… is this, is this your, first comic?
47:58
russellbraun: No, no.
48:00
russellbraun: No, it was the other one, probably the one right before that or right after that. I think it was 87, so…
48:07
russellbraun: That's the one, yeah, with the…
48:09
Tad Eggleston: the sec- second part of the story. So then you had to go back and find the beginning.
48:15
russellbraun: Absolutely, yeah. So…
48:17
Tad Eggleston: Back in that era where it was harder.
48:20
russellbraun: Yep.
48:21
russellbraun: Well, you just have to go deeper through the rack, you know, to the back of the rack.
48:26
Tad Eggleston: Oh, so…
48:27
russellbraun: The hunt was the fun, but…
48:29
Tad Eggleston: Yeah, yeah. Yeah, no, I, I was having a Don at C2E2, so this was another comic… comics thing, talking baseball. We were having a Don Mattingly conversation, and…
48:42
russellbraun: Hell yes!
48:42
Tad Eggleston: Like, I said, like, anybody who talks to me about Don Mattingly being their favorite Yankee, I can't get as upset about…
48:51
russellbraun: them.
48:52
Tad Eggleston: being Yankee fans, because, like…
48:56
Tad Eggleston: to be that great of a ballplayer, and a Yankee, and not have a World Series ring is almost impossible.
49:06
russellbraun: Yeah, yeah, he's one of the good guys, kind of like, you know, you want to…
49:11
russellbraun: You wanted to root for him. I mean, even people who weren't Yankee fans kind of could root for Don Nottingham, but a lot of people…
49:17
Tad Eggleston: It was on The Simpsons.
49:19
russellbraun: Yes.
49:20
russellbraun: With the cyber!
49:21
Tad Eggleston: Because…
49:22
russellbraun: I know how many people hate the Yankees, and, you know, I never hated that many other teams until they started hating me, so… But, yeah, no, Tom Pyre's also a big Yankee fan, so we.
49:34
Tad Eggleston: He is. He is, so is Mark Chiarello.
49:37
russellbraun: Yeah.
49:38
Tad Eggleston: So, so yeah.
49:40
russellbraun: In that formative time, I was just about the game. I mean, I was a big fan of the Oakland A's, in the early 70s.
49:47
Tad Eggleston: Yo, those were some good teams.
49:49
russellbraun: A's and the big red machine, just…
49:53
Tad Eggleston: Yeah.
49:54
russellbraun: I could watch any baseball and love it at the time.
49:58
Tad Eggleston: That's… that's me. I can watch any baseball and love it.
50:02
russellbraun: But my, my opening days was, like, your favorite players you wanted to emulate, or whatever, but mine was Joe Rudy, a guy who nobody remembers at all. I remember.
50:10
Tad Eggleston: Well, I mean, I don't… I can't say I remember Joe Rudy, because I think he may have retired before I was born.
50:18
Tad Eggleston: But I KNOW Joe Rudy.
50:25
russellbraun: But yeah, yeah, so, yeah, baseball,
50:28
russellbraun: Was a… was a big part of my life as a kid.
50:31
Tad Eggleston: Oh, no, he didn't retire before I was born. I have seen baseball cards from him.
50:36
Tad Eggleston: But I think it was from his angel's days.
50:40
russellbraun: Right. Sorry after that.
50:48
Tad Eggleston: Yeah.
50:49
Tad Eggleston: But, yeah, no, I actually love it. That's the other way you can tell that people are…
50:58
Tad Eggleston: Like, actual baseball fans, when they list…
51:03
Tad Eggleston: Players among their favorites that, like, Nobody lists among their favorites.
51:09
russellbraun: Sure.
51:10
Tad Eggleston: I mean, like, my favorite… my favorite baseball player is Greg Maddox, but I can… I can wax poet… poetic about Augie Ojeda and Terry Mulholland, and…
51:21
Tad Eggleston: John Dunstan.
51:23
russellbraun: Well, yeah, I mean, I'll go back with the obscure Yankees and Fred Chicken Stanley, who's.
51:28
Tad Eggleston: Oh, that's one that I don't know.
51:31
russellbraun: And, but I have baseball.
51:32
Tad Eggleston: a reference op.
51:35
russellbraun: And he was the utility guy, he was just, you know, he came in in any situation, and…
51:39
Tad Eggleston: Oh, I love utility, guys.
51:42
russellbraun: Yeah.
51:42
russellbraun: And that's what I…
51:43
Tad Eggleston: hitter.
51:44
russellbraun: Myself that in comics.
51:47
Tad Eggleston: Only for a couple of years. For a couple of years, in some ways, I think that's even cooler.
51:52
Tad Eggleston: For 3 seasons, he was primarily a switch hitter.
51:57
Tad Eggleston: But otherwise, a right-handed hitter.
52:03
Tad Eggleston: And in… in… 14 seasons managed to be worth…
52:10
Tad Eggleston: almost 2 wins above replacement. That's my kind of guy.
52:15
russellbraun: That's cool.
52:17
Tad Eggleston: I'm sorry, these are rabbit holes that I can go down really easily.
52:23
Tad Eggleston: And.
52:23
russellbraun: Well, unfortunately, a lot like comics, I don't really follow as much baseball as I used to, so…
52:31
Tad Eggleston: You know, I mean, I get that, I,
52:38
Tad Eggleston: I have always been somebody who reads more baseball than…
52:42
Tad Eggleston: Watches baseball, I love going to games, but watching on TV, except… Old Cubs games?
52:52
Tad Eggleston: I mean, the thing is, I was spoiled for baseball on TV. Arnie Harris and Joe Carneo were the producer and director of Cubs Baseball from the very first Cubs broadcast in, like, 1950.
53:08
russellbraun: Right.
53:09
Tad Eggleston: Until, like, they died in the 2000s.
53:13
Tad Eggleston: Right? So, like, they… wrote the book.
53:19
Tad Eggleston: on how to film baseball. Unfortunately, not many people copied their book.
53:26
Tad Eggleston: You know, and too often, when I'm watching games, I'm like, oh, this is a football crew.
53:32
Tad Eggleston: They're showing me stuff that doesn't matter, but is the stuff that they look for in a football game.
53:44
Tad Eggleston: But I love reading about baseball, and I can go down stat… rabbit holes immensely, which is why I need to close the baseball reference page, because otherwise we'll be in trouble, and we'll go down way too many baseball rabbit holes.
53:57
Tad Eggleston: But there's so much great baseball storytelling. I mean, I think that's why there are so many comics people that, like…
54:05
Tad Eggleston: If they're into sports at all, that aren't wrestling, baseball.
54:10
russellbraun: A lot of people complain about the pace of baseball, and that's one of the things I love about baseball. Yeah.
54:14
Tad Eggleston: It's totally one of the things I love about it.
54:18
russellbraun: As a comic artist, to have in the background a baseball game.
54:22
Tad Eggleston: Yeah.
54:23
Tad Eggleston: No, I, I mean, this is one of those crazy… Hassan Atzmin El-How is a huge baseball fan.
54:34
Tad Eggleston: in the UK, Indian descent.
54:40
Tad Eggleston: But it's because he loves having it on the background.
54:43
Tad Eggleston: When he works!
54:46
Tad Eggleston: Well, sure. So… 60s Marvel. 60s and 70s Marvel, that's always… that's a good…
54:57
Tad Eggleston: I love that Ross Andrew came up, too. I have only recently started to truly discover Ross Andrew, because I got to do a print interview
55:11
Tad Eggleston: with the eponymous Jason.
55:14
Tad Eggleston: Who does all sorts of weird comics. He's a Norwegian cartoonist. His stuff gets translated through Phantographics. And apparently, in Norway, the first Spider-Man comics were the Ross Andrew ones.
55:28
russellbraun: Okay, yeah.
55:29
Tad Eggleston: And then they, you know, so Ross Andrew is his… his Spider-Man artist, because it's like, they started… they started with what was coming out when they started translating them, and then, like, later they brought over the Lee and Ditko and weird numbering, and…
55:45
russellbraun: Yeah, I was lucky… it was kind of when I started reading this, when he was the main guy in the book, and I picked up back issues and Marvel Tales, too, so… my guy was Gil Kane, Inked by Romita. That was, like, my purpose.
56:00
Tad Eggleston: Okay.
56:00
russellbraun: So, and love Bermuda, love Ditko, and but yeah, all that 70s Bronze Age Spider-Man stuff was, was just…
56:09
russellbraun: Perfect for me. It's just, that was comics for me.
56:11
Tad Eggleston: I mean, it's…
56:13
russellbraun: It brings back that kind of feel, that kind of…
56:15
Tad Eggleston: does.
56:16
russellbraun: You know, so…
56:17
Tad Eggleston: Only…
56:18
russellbraun: marks it back.
56:18
Tad Eggleston: Better writer than Stan Lee.
56:21
russellbraun: Yeah.
56:22
Tad Eggleston: So style.
56:23
russellbraun: I don't know.
56:26
Tad Eggleston: Ahoy, Ahoy brings back that, that, that…
56:30
Tad Eggleston: And, like, before I get myself in trouble, Stan Lee is a great pitchman. Stan Lee, in many ways, saved comics.
56:40
Tad Eggleston: Stan Lee overwrote everything he… almost everything he ever touched. The number of times that he was able to, like, just nail it just isn't that high. You know, but I think he actually did more often with Spider-Man than anything else. Like, that…
56:58
Tad Eggleston: that first Spider-Man story is 11 perfect pages, and, like…
57:03
Tad Eggleston: How crazy is that? It's an 11-page story.
57:07
Tad Eggleston: Not an 8-page story, not a 22-page story. Because it was an anthology book, it's an 11-page story.
57:16
manru: That's, you know, the power of having, like, weird… weird sort of, like, lengths for stories, I think. Right. You don't think in the same familiar patterns, or you don't think, like, okay, well, I gotta have this thing, this sort of turn here.
57:33
russellbraun: And it's not formulaic, and it's not, you know, we got to pad this out. It's not a financial decision, it's a story decision, so…
57:40
Tad Eggleston: Right.
57:41
Tad Eggleston: And it established, like, the entire Spider-Man mythos in 11 pages.
57:47
Tad Eggleston: like… I mean…
57:51
Tad Eggleston: one of the things that I once read is… is… do you remember the, the, like, gauntlet thing that they did in…
57:59
Tad Eggleston: I want to say it was the early 2000s, where they had, like, 4 different writers, and they went through all the Spider-Man villains, and…
58:07
Tad Eggleston: One of the things that they were doing during that era was they were trying to not use
58:17
Tad Eggleston: traditional Spider-Man poses.
58:20
Tad Eggleston: Trying, trying to, to, to, like, create a new set of…
58:27
Tad Eggleston: Spider-Man can… you know, not necessarily new costume or whatnot, but… because, like, if you go through that 11 pages.
58:35
Tad Eggleston: you see almost every iconic Spider-Man
58:39
Tad Eggleston: pose. Sure. From swinging through the air. There's even a variation on the Spider-Man No More, the back to the…
58:48
russellbraun: Yeah, yeah.
58:49
Tad Eggleston: All in that first 11 pages, which is why Steve Ditko is genius, even if he's a little crazy.
58:56
Tad Eggleston: But those, those sometimes go together, just ask Mark.
59:04
russellbraun: I resemble that remark as well, so…
59:07
Tad Eggleston: There we go.
59:08
russellbraun: I know about the,
59:10
russellbraun: trying to come up with the iconic poses, because I draw… every Wednesday, I draw Spider-Man for, social media. It's, like, Redhead Wednesday, so I use a… usually use that animator's red pencil, and I draw up a whole bunch of these, Spider-Man drawings. People seem to like it, so…
59:28
russellbraun: Odd.
59:29
Tad Eggleston: I am going to make certain that I'm following you on social media, because that appeals to me.
59:38
Tad Eggleston: I don't spend much time on social media, but I could see making a regular thing. About what time do you post these?
59:45
russellbraun: 9 o'clock in the morning.
59:47
Tad Eggleston: 9 o'clock in the morning, perfect. If it's a specific time, that's even better.
59:51
russellbraun: One of the… one of the drawings on a Wednesday, so that one's got a lot of Ross Andrew vibe to it, I think, so…
59:58
Tad Eggleston: It does. Yeah.
59:59
manru: therapy.
1:00:00
russellbraun: But… But yeah, things will keep me,
1:00:04
russellbraun: occupied. It's like a warm-up drawing in the morning, so… Webhead Wednesday.
1:00:11
Tad Eggleston: Oh, I am following you, so that's.
1:00:13
manru: No, I just need your.
1:00:14
Tad Eggleston: I remember.
1:00:15
manru: For the alliterate.
1:00:16
Tad Eggleston: book on Wednesdays.
1:00:17
manru: Is that why you chose Wednesday to do this, for the alliteration?
1:00:20
russellbraun: I had done that, and I saw that it was, you know, you think you came up with something, and you realize, no, it's a thing. It was already a hashtag.
1:00:26
manru: Taco Tuesday.
1:00:28
russellbraun: Yeah, so I just kind of followed along with that.
1:00:31
russellbraun: Oh, I love it.
1:00:32
Tad Eggleston: I like this one with the…
1:00:34
Tad Eggleston: With the… where he's pulling the webs down from the top?
1:00:39
russellbraun: Yeah, it was a new one, yeah. That's cool.
1:00:43
russellbraun: Because I'll just start drawing a pose and not knowing what's going to happen with it, and then just finish it off. And the idea is to try and get the whole body on the… on the page, on the, you know.
1:00:53
russellbraun: So, it's… Yeah, that's the brief. It's gotta be Spider-Man, it's gotta fit on the page, so…
1:01:00
russellbraun: And hopefully not be the same pose I drew last week.
1:01:03
Tad Eggleston: But wait a minute, there's a Spider-Man here that's not red, is that… does that mean it's not a Weatherhead Wednesday one?
1:01:09
russellbraun: It might have been a different one, but yeah, I usually try and do just the red ones. I might not have had time to do a new one, so I… I just found something I had.
1:01:16
russellbraun: So…
1:01:17
Tad Eggleston: I mean, it is right between a Joker and a, and a butcher.
1:01:21
russellbraun: Okay, yeah, there's still probably a Wednesday.
1:01:26
russellbraun: Yeah, I remember that one, yeah.
1:01:30
Tad Eggleston: That's a… I don't know if I've seen that kick angle, where you see more of his heel than the sole of his foot?
1:01:38
russellbraun: Again, just a fun exercise, so… Yeah, Instagram…
1:01:43
Tad Eggleston: I'm like… I mean… it's one of those things that I don't even think…
1:01:48
Tad Eggleston: Those of us who are geeks completely notice how… how much certain poses… Aren't altered that much.
1:02:01
russellbraun: Yeah.
1:02:02
russellbraun: Well, I mean, a lot of times there's a reason for it, too. It's just kind of like… Right.
1:02:06
russellbraun: when you're drawing… I'm trying to change it up so that it's something I haven't seen before, and then you realize, well, you haven't seen it before. It's so awkward that it doesn't really make any.
1:02:15
Tad Eggleston: Well, I mean, as you say that, like, I think of the first hush, where, like.
1:02:21
Tad Eggleston: Jim Lee talked about, why on earth would Batman wear boots with flat feet? Of course he'd have
1:02:27
Tad Eggleston: treaded combat boots, I thought, before the third time I drew them, before the 30th time I drew them. Yeah.
1:02:35
russellbraun: Yeah.
1:02:36
Tad Eggleston: It's like, oh, this is why he doesn't wear sensible shoes.
1:02:42
russellbraun: Yeah.
1:02:44
russellbraun: Yeah, yeah. So, you know, there is, there is a,
1:02:49
russellbraun: an element of reality to it, but there's also an element of saving yourself from drawing Jack of Hearts, the George Perez character.
1:03:00
russellbraun: Alright.
1:03:01
russellbraun: With, you know, all the playing card stuff all over, and it's like, please don't ask me to ever draw that character, so…
1:03:08
Tad Eggleston: I, I…
1:03:08
russellbraun: I know I'm gonna get requests for that at convention, so…
1:03:12
Tad Eggleston: I was, I like comics across…
1:03:19
Tad Eggleston: all sorts of comics, and when we were talking about Charles Schultz, and we've got a comic strip book club, and we did Charles Schultz and Peanuts twice, actually, because the one time ever that we managed to lose an episode before it got
1:03:32
Tad Eggleston: put up.
1:03:33
Tad Eggleston: Was… was the first time we talked about peanuts.
1:03:37
Tad Eggleston: But, in, in, in reading all sorts of stuff,
1:03:43
Tad Eggleston: Schultz was very hands-on with everything.
1:03:47
Tad Eggleston: like, he had a lot of trouble letting go of the characters whatsoever. And apparently, when they went to TV, like, the biggest challenge was, like.
1:04:02
Tad Eggleston: Figuring out what they look like from different angles.
1:04:06
russellbraun: Huh, yep.
1:04:07
Tad Eggleston: Because they hadn't had… he hadn't had to do that.
1:04:09
Tad Eggleston: You know, he hadn't even realized how few angles he'd used in, like, 20 years of peanuts at that point, until they started trying to figure out, well, what does Charlie Brown look like?
1:04:23
Tad Eggleston: From slightly above, and…
1:04:26
russellbraun: Yeah.
1:04:27
manru: No reference.
1:04:30
Tad Eggleston: You know, and I think, I think that, that it, again, like, the layman.
1:04:37
Tad Eggleston: The person who's just reading it and enjoying the story.
1:04:41
Tad Eggleston: Doesn't… doesn't think about what goes into…
1:04:46
Tad Eggleston: figuring out a different… I mean, I… I…
1:04:50
Tad Eggleston: it might have even been you, Mark, and I'm certain that a number of people have talked about…
1:04:58
Tad Eggleston: Like, the writer on a comic is, like, the writer and kind of the director of a movie, but the… the artist on a comic is the actors, and the costume designer, and the lighting director, and the set designer, and kind of the director, and certainly the editor.
1:05:17
manru: Yeah, no.
1:05:17
Tad Eggleston: Like, if you compare it to movies, you're wearing all of the hats.
1:05:22
manru: Right, the pre-production is almost entirely the writer, you know, with the assist by the editor. The execution of the story is almost entirely the artist.
1:05:32
Tad Eggleston: Yeah. All of the filming and post-production, that's… you know, and like…
1:05:39
Tad Eggleston: like what we were talking about. Oh, and I just discovered that I don't have to feel bad about talking about that corndog page, because you put it up on Instagram yesterday.
1:05:51
russellbraun: Turns out.
1:05:52
Tad Eggleston: So it was… Okay.
1:05:55
russellbraun: Oh, whoops.
1:05:56
Tad Eggleston: So, so… We'll get… Rolling towards a hard out… hard out. You're allowed to say that out loud.
1:06:05
manru: I was just trying to be subtle and professional.
1:06:08
Tad Eggleston: I mean, like…
1:06:10
Tad Eggleston: Terry Moore once held up a post-it note to say that he needed to go to the bathroom, could we wrap it up? And I'm sitting there going, Terry, you can just say, hey, we've been talking for almost 3 hours, I'm having a great time, but I need to go.
1:06:25
Tad Eggleston: We're not that professional here. Okay. But that's a… I was… I was… I was rambling because I'm into all of this stuff.
1:06:35
Tad Eggleston: But we'll go to final questions, because I forgot what I was about to ask.
1:06:43
Tad Eggleston: Mark knows one of these final questions, but I think my other one is new since the last time you were on.
1:06:51
Tad Eggleston: This is my fifth year of doing this podcast, and I feel like I've entered the Twilight Zone.
1:06:58
Tad Eggleston: I have surreal experiences on a regular basis that I sit there
1:07:04
Tad Eggleston: like, if I think 5 years ago, you told me that I would take Mark Russell out for pizza, I would have gone, whatever.
1:07:13
Tad Eggleston: But I did.
1:07:14
manru: Chicago Deep Dish, no less.
1:07:16
Tad Eggleston: We had deep dish pizza together.
1:07:18
manru: blessed.
1:07:18
Tad Eggleston: I mean, he was in town.
1:07:23
Tad Eggleston: But what's even cooler is I've discovered that, like, that's not unique to me. Whoever I talk to in comics
1:07:31
Tad Eggleston: As just a whole list of experiences that, that, like.
1:07:37
Tad Eggleston: No matter how long they've been doing this, no matter how much acclaim they have, they have stories where, like, when they think about them, there's an element of they have to pinch themselves to go, wait, wait a minute, did that…
1:07:48
Tad Eggleston: that really happened to me. You know, whether it's the kid that came up and told them what their work meant to them, or walking through the streets of
1:08:02
Tad Eggleston: a European city with Sergio Aragones late at night. I've heard a couple of different… involving Quentin Tarantino.
1:08:10
manru: That's, like, one of the…
1:08:11
Tad Eggleston: involved his mom.
1:08:12
manru: great advantages of working in comics is the fandom. It's the fact that, like, it's like you get to travel, you get to go to conventions, you meet people who read your work all the time, and it's…
1:08:23
manru: And are excited by it. People are genuinely excited about the medium in a way that's not necessarily true of every other written medium, and you get to interact with people on a regular basis in a way you don't necessarily get to do if you're writing novels or if you're writing, you know, screenplays and stuff, so it's…
1:08:38
manru: To me, it's just like, this is a…
1:08:39
Tad Eggleston: I think…
1:08:40
manru: Also, the collaborative…
1:08:42
Tad Eggleston: The collaborative nature of a lot of comics.
1:08:45
Tad Eggleston: leans towards it, too. You wind up…
1:08:48
Tad Eggleston: needing to talk to people, that you might have gone, oh my god, I get to work with so-and-so?
1:08:57
Tad Eggleston: I used to read so-and-so. They want to work with me.
1:09:01
manru: It's crazy. I have a few of those, it's like, I remember reading…
1:09:04
manru: this, this, like, comics by this artist when I was, like, 12 or 13, and now I'm working with them, really?
1:09:09
Tad Eggleston: Yeah, I mean, you work with Mike Allred. You still gotta…
1:09:12
manru: Red, you know, I work.
1:09:14
Tad Eggleston: bring him on.
1:09:14
manru: 122 panel.
1:09:15
Tad Eggleston: We need to solve the Paul Pope mystery.
1:09:21
Tad Eggleston: So, that's my new question, is tell me a story. Tell… tell me one of those experiences, those surreal or just wonderful experiences that, like, you have only had because you chose comics as a major part of your life. And, like, when you think about it, you go, wow.
1:09:40
Tad Eggleston: I, I, I, I, I really had that happen.
1:09:46
russellbraun: Arc, you bet.
1:09:47
manru: Oh, okay, well, I'll start. Yeah, no, for me, one of the greatest experiences I've had working in comics was, I got to go to CCXP in Sao Paulo, Brazil.
1:09:58
manru: And… and while there, I got to meet, like, a Brazilian artist, named Ricardo Lecce.
1:10:04
manru: who, he showed me his work, and I'd never heard of him before, but he showed me his work, and it was just, like, brilliant. It was just, like, Mobius-level…
1:10:12
manru: Detail, and he told these really visual stories that, you know, just were sort of elegant and symbolic.
1:10:19
manru: And I was blown away enough by it that I just, you know, invited him to lunch, and we went and had lunch, and
1:10:28
manru: he told me about his philosophy of art, and also why he thought, like, Brazilian culture has an inferiority complex, why he feels like, even though there's a lot of amazing Brazilian artists, and Brazilian culture in general is, like, really creative and unique.
1:10:43
manru: They don't feel like it's worth commemorating, they don't feel like it's worth celebrating unless it's some other country's culture, which is why it's really hard to find Brazilian work in Brazilian
1:10:53
manru: museums and stuff, and I just remember it being, like, one of the best, just, conversations about art I'd ever had, and it was with a guy I hadn't…
1:11:02
manru: I had never heard of, like, a day before, and… and he just has this incredible life story, and it was just like, this is something that never would have happened to me in a million years if I had
1:11:11
manru: you know, retain my day job, or if I had gone into virtually any other art form. But there's all these stories out there, all these people who are just doing legendary work, but who maybe you've never heard of because they're doing it because they love it, because they're not, you know, at a convention selling
1:11:29
manru: you know, 5,000 prints, they're… they're working and creating masterworks just because they don't know what else to do with themselves. Whenever I get a chance to connect with one of those people.
1:11:40
manru: It's really humbling.
1:11:44
Tad Eggleston: I'm looking at some of his pages on… on,
1:11:52
Tad Eggleston: Instagram. Also, it looks like Diana Schutz is, translating something of his.
1:12:01
Tad Eggleston: Or did Trent in search of lost Tintin.
1:12:06
manru: Yeah, I think that's his, like, a sort of newish.
1:12:10
manru: Project.
1:12:11
Tad Eggleston: Yeah. Well, it… Diana Schutz just recently put up Translation Wrapped.
1:12:18
Tad Eggleston: And Ricardo, posted that on Instagram a day ago, so…
1:12:23
manru: There you go.
1:12:24
Tad Eggleston: So you brought up a story about somebody that we might be able to read in America soon.
1:12:30
manru: Yeah, I highly recommend that. Yeah.
1:12:34
Tad Eggleston: I'm all over it.
1:12:37
Tad Eggleston: And that's my favorite kind of story, is the one that also makes me want to go learn things.
1:12:45
Tad Eggleston: Rest?
1:12:47
russellbraun: Well, I'll go the other way with it, with I got to work really early on with some real legendary guys in comics. I was brought in to comics by Joe Orlando.
1:12:57
russellbraun: Who was the vice president at DC. He was my teacher at the School of Visual Arts,
1:13:03
russellbraun: And… Yeah, no, but the one I like to tell is about working with George Perez, and…
1:13:09
Tad Eggleston: Nice.
1:13:09
russellbraun: 1990.
1:13:11
russellbraun: Going into 91, I think, yeah, 91. He was doing War of the Gods, which was a…
1:13:18
russellbraun: big crossover event at DC, before they really knew how to do those, so all the other editors had control over their own characters, and
1:13:27
russellbraun: it was a nightmare for George. He was one of my favorite,
1:13:32
russellbraun: writers, well, favorite artists growing up as a kid, so just the fact that I was working with him, this is before the internet, so it's just phone calls, so I had to make phone calls to George Perez while I was working on this comic. He would send me, layouts on the boards, rough, like, almost thick figures in some spots.
1:13:50
russellbraun: And I would try and make it look like what I thought George Perez would feel like. So, it was a really intense and fun project.
1:13:58
russellbraun: For me. But George… for George, it was a nightmare, because he was also doing, Infinity Gauntlet or something like that for Marvel at the same time, one of those other crossovers, so…
1:14:09
Tad Eggleston: Oh!
1:14:10
russellbraun: handle at both ends but…
1:14:13
Tad Eggleston: Well, and…
1:14:15
Tad Eggleston: I've always wondered with George Perez what it must be like to be known as the guy who crammed all of the people in every cover.
1:14:25
russellbraun: Yeah, yeah. And every page.
1:14:28
russellbraun: Right.
1:14:29
russellbraun: His storytelling style, sometimes when I… again, the layouts would be, like, a big panel, and then by the end of it, there were, like, postage span panels at the bottom, because he had so much he wanted to get on the page, so… Right.
1:14:41
russellbraun: But there was a page that was specific that I always tell the story about, is an Aquaman page, where Aquaman is fighting some kind of a monster underwater, and the rough pose of Aquaman is throwing a fourth bolt of water underwater at this monster.
1:14:58
russellbraun: And me being a Marvel kid, I didn't really know for a fact, but I had to call him on it and say, listen, George, you have…
1:15:06
russellbraun: Aquaman throwing water, like, throwing a force bolt, isn't that his wife? He can't do that, you know, I know… I watch Super Friends, so I know that much about Aquaman, so… and so I'm talking to George Perez on the phone, like, just one of my idols, you know, and he says.
1:15:22
russellbraun: Oh,
1:15:24
russellbraun: hang on, I'll go check who's who, and I'll call you right back. And he goes to the DC reference stuff, and he calls me back 5 minutes later, and he says, yeah.
1:15:34
russellbraun: he can't do that. He's… and so we started, like, just mocking Aquaman before it was really, you know, fun to do, or… Just… he has no real frontal attack, and there's nothing he can do from a distance, so… so I know he can call fish, so why don't I just have him pointing and calling a big column of fish to hit the monster?
1:15:53
russellbraun: And George is like, Hunterhead sharks.
1:15:57
russellbraun: And I said, yeah, okay, problem solved. And we just laughed.
1:16:01
russellbraun: Hammerhead sharks, and then I hung up the phone and realized, Again, no internet.
1:16:05
russellbraun: Now I gotta draw a bunch of hammerhead sharks, and I don't have any reference for…
1:16:10
russellbraun: the comic artist's, you know, answer for that is silhouetted hammerhead sharks, you know the basic idea of what it looks like. So, you know, it was just one of those moments where you realize, oh my god, I'm drawing a comic book with one of my heroes that…
1:16:26
russellbraun: from… all the stuff I read in the 70s that he drew, and
1:16:31
russellbraun: And again, just one of the nicest guys in comics, too, so… I really miss George.
1:16:38
Tad Eggleston: I have only ever heard good things about George.
1:16:44
Tad Eggleston: Alright, my, my, this has been a closing question since the very beginning, so Marcus had to…
1:16:52
Tad Eggleston: answered a few times, and I'm going to remind you
1:16:55
Tad Eggleston: As I had to… back in… was it December or January that we talked?
1:17:00
Tad Eggleston: Talk.
1:17:01
Tad Eggleston: last. You can only get away with
1:17:05
Tad Eggleston: with using the same book, if you didn't pitch it so well that I bought it, so you can't say Elmer again.
1:17:12
manru: Okay.
1:17:13
manru: Well, luckily, I came prepared.
1:17:15
Tad Eggleston: Okay.
1:17:18
Tad Eggleston: Chill.
1:17:19
manru: Oh, why not?
1:17:20
Tad Eggleston: I got… Russ hasn't heard the question yet.
1:17:25
Tad Eggleston: Tell me something you love, preferably a comic, but we don't have rules.
1:17:30
Tad Eggleston: Preferably storytelling, but again, with the rules. But something that you love.
1:17:34
Tad Eggleston: that not enough other people, particularly around you, have experienced, and you want them to, so you have more people to talk about it with.
1:17:44
Tad Eggleston: prepared, so he can go first.
1:17:45
manru: This is what I've chose because, you know, it's relatively new to me. I think it's relatively new to everybody. It's a collection of news stories by Junji Ito called Statues.
1:17:58
manru: And I just found it, like, utterly page-turning and just sort of engrossing.
1:18:04
manru: And, of course, it's not…
1:18:07
manru: it's not terribly unique to, like, Junji Ito. Everybody likes Junji Ito, but, I… you know, to me, it's like, I enjoy his short work better than I do his long work, I think. Even that… that's crazy, because I love his, you know, long stories, but… but… yeah.
1:18:24
Tad Eggleston: Well, this is where I have to say, just cause, like, we're gonna plug your Kickstarter again in a minute, one of the cooler Kickstarters
1:18:32
Tad Eggleston: Out there right now?
1:18:35
Tad Eggleston: is… for a Junji Ito adaptation.
1:18:41
Tad Eggleston: Junji Ito's In Old Records, a horror drama on vinyl.
1:18:49
manru: Interesting.
1:18:50
Tad Eggleston: So, Ryan Cady did the scripted adaptation, and rock artist Poppy voices the English version.
1:18:59
Tad Eggleston: And, and, and he did a story called… Old records.
1:19:10
Tad Eggleston: That has been… Turned into a audio drama that…
1:19:16
Tad Eggleston: For 3 more days, you can go order your… your vinyl.
1:19:22
Tad Eggleston: to be able to listen to an adaptation of a Junji Ito story.
1:19:28
Tad Eggleston: I then need to find the story itself, because obviously it's way more fun to listen to something while you're reading it, and I don't know if they're sending you a… I don't think they're actually giving… well, I mean, one never knows. It would be awesome if, like, it was a gatefold.
1:19:44
Tad Eggleston: And, and they gave you the comic in pages…
1:19:48
Tad Eggleston: With the record, but they're not clear on whether or not you get the comic.
1:19:52
Tad Eggleston: But you do get the adaptation, and that's just awesome.
1:19:59
Tad Eggleston: So yeah, I like that call, because I like Junji Ito's short stories more than I like… he's got a whole book of cat stories.
1:20:05
manru: Yeah, that one's really good, too.
1:20:07
Tad Eggleston: Yeah.
1:20:08
manru: I think I like statues more.
1:20:11
Tad Eggleston: I haven't read it yet. I need to. Thank you for the recommendation. I'm not certain I'd… like, he's one of those guys that's been around forever and hit the states somewhat recently, so it seems like there's a new Junji Ito release.
1:20:27
Tad Eggleston: every day?
1:20:29
manru: I mean, it's not quite that.
1:20:31
Tad Eggleston: Cause it's like… 20, 30 years of material just flooding the U.S. market, because…
1:20:38
manru: Right, they got a backlog.
1:20:40
Tad Eggleston: Right.
1:20:42
Tad Eggleston: Alright, Russ.
1:20:45
russellbraun: Let me see… most of the stuff I like is pretty… pop culture, relevant and…
1:20:51
Tad Eggleston: That's allowed. You know, I mean, again, no rules, but I always bring up to people who are worried about that, that, like, Nate Powell said Jonathan Hickman's X-Men.
1:21:05
Tad Eggleston: And he's like, but you gotta remember that I'm an indie comic creator. The people I hang out with don't read X-Men anymore.
1:21:13
russellbraun: Well, I was trying to think of a couple, and without, you know, but maybe,
1:21:21
russellbraun: Well, they're doing comics, I mean.
1:21:24
russellbraun: 70s, again, I'm stuck in the 70s, I guess, but .
1:21:27
Tad Eggleston: Okay.
1:21:28
russellbraun: Cole Shock the Night Stalker.
1:21:31
russellbraun: So, Darren McGavin, TV show. And, I've done… actually, it was fun, because I got to do, a cover and interior illustrations for the, the first real printing of the novel.
1:21:43
russellbraun: Of, Jeff Bryce's novel, of the initial stuff.
1:21:47
russellbraun: It was later adapted, by, Richard Matheson for the first two TV movies, and, and then there was one season of the show. But recently, a guy's had the rights to it, and he's doing a lot of real fun stuff, putting out comics of Kolshack, so…
1:22:02
Tad Eggleston: Okay.
1:22:03
russellbraun: I just did… Steve Niles did a,
1:22:07
russellbraun: one of them, Kolshak meets the classic monsters, and I did the cover for him of Kolshak Meeting Frankenstein. So, but yeah, every now and then, I'll get… I'll find somebody who'll come up to me at a convention and is just, like, a rabid Kolshak fan, and it's always kind of fun, because
1:22:24
russellbraun: It's such a weird little, niche, you know?
1:22:29
Tad Eggleston: Well, and I'll be the first one to say that it's somebody that I have heard of.
1:22:35
Tad Eggleston: But I've never watched or read, so it totally goes on my list of, okay, I need to learn more.
1:22:42
russellbraun: I mean, it's, basically, most people know him as the old man from A Christmas Story, but it's Darren McGavin, and he is the character. I mean, they've tried to reboot it a couple of times and do different things with it. It's supposed to be… Johnny Depp was gonna play him in a movie at one point.
1:22:58
russellbraun: But, without Darren McGavin, it really doesn't make any sense, so…
1:23:02
russellbraun: He is the character. And yeah, so one of my, like, most rabid fandoms, if I have one, would be, Kolshack.
1:23:11
Tad Eggleston: Okay, I like it.
1:23:14
Tad Eggleston: I like it.
1:23:15
Tad Eggleston: I think I have… No.
1:23:17
russellbraun: I have the book over here, too, actually.
1:23:21
russellbraun: This was the… the cover for…
1:23:24
Tad Eggleston: Oh, nice.
1:23:25
russellbraun: The new printing of the novel, so… by Monstrous Books.
1:23:32
russellbraun: And, this was the, the Frankenstein cover, so…
1:23:37
Tad Eggleston: Oh, very cool.
1:23:40
Tad Eggleston: Very cool, he says on the audio podcast, where he's the only one that gets to see it.
1:23:46
Tad Eggleston: And Mark, if he was looking up at the right moment.
1:23:52
Tad Eggleston: Thank you guys so much. The… the… is…
1:23:59
Tad Eggleston: Forgotten Divine. It looks amazing.
1:24:03
Tad Eggleston: I, I, like… again, I got to see just the first 7 pages, and…
1:24:11
Tad Eggleston: was… became even more excited than I already was, and I didn't really think that that was possible.
1:24:20
russellbraun: Excuse me.
1:24:21
manru: Well, I hope you like the rest. You know, I'm very proud.
1:24:25
Tad Eggleston: wait for you to slip it to me, Mark.
1:24:27
manru: Yeah, I'll see what I can do.
1:24:30
Tad Eggleston: I will still back it. I mean, I throw money at you all the time.
1:24:35
manru: I appreciate that. That's my favorite reaction, I think, to my presence.
1:24:41
russellbraun: Actually, it's funny, I'm getting that from a lot of my friends that I always give them comps of everything, or like, how can we back it? They're, like, so excited to back it, and it's like.
1:24:52
russellbraun: I mean, I'm… it's kind of really nice. It's a nice feeling. It's like, I usually… I'm like, you don't have to do that, I'll… I always have it for you. And, you know, even family, but everybody wants…
1:25:03
Tad Eggleston: I mean, it's like…
1:25:04
russellbraun: I think it's kind of exciting.
1:25:06
Tad Eggleston: On one side, like, don't get me wrong, I love getting stuff for free.
1:25:12
Tad Eggleston: But on the other side, like, the reason I do this is I love the medium of comics.
1:25:19
Tad Eggleston: And both, I want more people to love the medium of comics, and I am acutely aware of how many people who work in the medium of comics, like…
1:25:31
Tad Eggleston: Either need day jobs, or spouses who make more money, or… or live on ramen noodles in small studio apartments, or…
1:25:40
Tad Eggleston: Whatever, because they're compelled to make comics.
1:25:44
Tad Eggleston: But there's not really money in comics. So I encourage people to…
1:25:51
Tad Eggleston: if they love comics the way I do, find ways to support their local comic artists, and they're not local comic artists. I just said that because of the support your local sheriff, which I've never heard, or I've never watched, but, like, it…
1:26:06
Tad Eggleston: Rolled off the tongue, autistic brain.
1:26:10
Tad Eggleston: That sort of thing. So, everybody go and click notify me on the Forgotten Divine Kickstarter, which will roll out probably…
1:26:22
Tad Eggleston: Either later this month, or early next month, I think is…
1:26:25
manru: I think early May is when we're… Yeah.
1:26:27
russellbraun: That's what they're talking about.
1:26:28
Tad Eggleston: Well, but if you want it to be earlier than that, the key, you know, I mean, I'm certain that there is a thresh… there is a notify me threshold that is like, oh, the pot is hot, let's go!
1:26:39
manru: Please, yeah, sign up, at least for the notifications.
1:26:43
Tad Eggleston: Yeah, it sounds like it's done, and Ahoy is a… a… a, like…
1:26:50
Tad Eggleston: solid company that delivers, so this is not one of those throw your money at the artists and.
1:26:56
manru: And you won't have to wait for 2 or 3 years, you know, it's like you said, it's done, it's in the can, it's ready to be mailed out.
1:27:04
Tad Eggleston: Right. No, actually, and, like, this hadn't even occurred to me as a thing to do, and I wonder how many people do it,
1:27:14
Tad Eggleston: I was seeing a write-up for another Kickstarter regular that said, as always, if we fund early, what happened during the last week of the campaign?
1:27:27
Tad Eggleston: So you will get it.
1:27:30
manru: Right.
1:27:31
manru: No, it is forthcoming.
1:27:33
Tad Eggleston: Right. So, thank you so much, gentlemen, for Mark Russell Braun. I'm gonna use that joke one more time. This has been 22 Panels, and we will see you after the next page.